Reporter's notebook: Atlantic outgrowing 'The Pacific'

UC San Diego computer scientist Larry Smarr, an expert on how mobile device can be used to monitor a person's health, is among this year's speakers at "The Atlantic Meets the Pacific" conference.
Atlantic/UCSD-TV

UC San Diego computer scientist Larry Smarr, an expert on how mobile device can be used to monitor a person's health, is among this year's speakers at "The Atlantic Meets the Pacific" conference.

I'm not sure whether to cheer or jeer the organizers of "The Atlantic Meets the Pacific," the annual tech, science and health conference that's held at UC San Diego. This year's focus on cancer and mining medical data for breakthroughs couldn't be more timely. But comparatively few members of the public will get to attend this gathering of "thought leaders" because the venues chosen for the conference are small.

The Atlantic, a print and online media company, has signed up about 30 speakers for the 2.5 day conference, which begins October 2 at Scripps Seaside Forum at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. And the line-up is deeply impressive. It features such luminaries as Siddhartha Mukherjee, who won the Pulitzer Prize for "The Emperor of the Maladies," his riveting history of cancer, and Eric Topol, the La Jolla cardiologist who is a national leader in the mobile health device movement.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Siddhartha Mukherjee will be among this year's speakers at The Atlantic Meets the Pacific. AP

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Pulitzer Prize-winning author Siddhartha Mukherjee will be among this year's speakers at The Atlantic Meets the Pacific.

Many of the panel discussions and talks will be held at the Forum's auditorium, which is small, limiting public access. Other sessions will be held at the Qualcomm Institute theater on main campus, which also is small. It's as if the organizers overlooked the fact that they're putting on a conference on a public university campus that has a major medical school and several large hospitals nearby.

Ticket prices also are steep. A pass for the entire conference, including evening dinner sections, costs $495. The evening-only passes range from $50 to $80, which is beyond the reach of many UCSD students. The Atlantic should book the talks into larger auditoriums, which would allow it to lower ticket prices and make this more of a community event. The conference comes barely a week after UC San Diego begins its fall quarter, and just a few days before this year's Nobel Prizes are announced. Lot's of people are talking science in La Jolla this time of year. The Atlantic should tap into that. It has a chance to put on one of the region's premiere public science and tech events.